Understanding both the steep declines and the success stories could help to inform efforts to protect birds as well as other species. (via KnowableMag)
. It was an attempt to, for the first time, synthesize research from across the world to create a comprehensive picture of global changes in bird abundance. “Looking across all taxa, there are big signals for declines everywhere,” Lees says. “There are some species which are increasing, but more species are declining than are increasing. In our attempts to halt the loss of global bird biodiversity, we’re currently not succeeding.
For each species, they collected as much information as they could about population trends, pressures driving the species to extinction, and key decisions or actions taken to protect them. Over daylong Zoom calls, small groups of researchers hashed out the details before everyone assigned each species a score indicating how confident they were that conservation actions had influenced the species’ status.
has boosted the species’ numbers to more than 500, with several hundred living once more in the wild.But for other species, there was less certainty. The red-billed curassow of eastern Brazil, for one, faces threats of habitat fragmentation and hunting. Protected areas intended to safeguard it aren’t always well enforced, making it probable but less clear that conservation has helped the species.
For each species, Marra says, it will be important to learn what’s behind their shrinking populations. Currently, he says, “we’re not approaching conservation from a species perspective. And people are nervous about doing that … they view it as being just too difficult. But I maintain that we can figure it out, just like we’ve done with … all the species that almost disappeared because of DDT.
Involving local people can benefit biodiversity while respecting communities, McGowan says. In South America, for example, the yellow-eared parrot nearly went extinct, in part because people decimated palm groves, which are prime nesting habitats for the birds, to use the fronds in Palm Sunday processions. Successful conservation actions have included a community outreach campaign that encouraged people to stop cutting down wax palms and cease hunting the parrots.
As more data emerge, researchers urge optimism. “It’s really important not to have a doomsayer sort of position,” Lees says. Conservation has saved very rare species from extinction, he notes, and reversed declines in once-common species.Amid the bad news, some bird success storiesTake, for example, the black-browed albatross, a seabird with a range throughout the southern oceans that encompasses Chile, Antarctica and Australia.
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